Saturday, August 8, 2009

What a Hoot!


As you all have probably learned by now, I love cupcakes. I love eating them, I love baking them, I love decorating them. I came across this cute idea for cupcakes from one of my favorite blogs: "How to Eat a Cupcake". Who doesn't enjoy a cupcake shaped like animals, especially owl mamas and babies. This recipe comes from the book, "Hello Cupcake" by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson.

The recipe requires a basic chocolate cupcake recipe. I went with Martha Stuart's one-bowl chocolate cupcakes. Malia and I made these for our bday, and they were a hit. They are also super easy to make. For this recipe you are going to need a regular cupcake tin, and a mini cupcake tin. I halved the recipe and ended up with 6 regular cupcakes, and around 16 minis.


Assembling the cupcakes, frosting starts first!

Let me tell you, assembling these cupcakes was NOT as easy as baking them. I recommend making these when you have a couple hours with nothing better to do than devote your life to making the perfectly shaped owl beak from an M&M. Okay, so they weren't easy, but I did enjoy myself for the most part. It was fun seeing these owls come alive.


These iris-devoid owls look a little creepy.

In order to decorate these owls you are going to need chocolate frosting, oreos, mini oreos, junior mints, mini M&Ms (I used regular sized M&Ms), and runts (I used yellow M&Ms for the beak). In essence you will need two halves of oreos (with creme) for the eyes of the mama owls. You will use two mini halves for the baby owls.


While I thought these came out pretty well, they certainly were nothing like the perfect owls shown in the first picture. I mean to get out all of the crumbs in the creme would take another two hours in and of itself! The mini M&Ms were hard to come by, so I ended up using regular M&Ms for the baby owls. The orange M&Ms certainly made for some interesting expressions. I do like how the regular M&Ms accentuate the large iris to white ratio.

All in all these cupcakes were pretty cute, and they were a hit with my friends and coworkers.


Hoot!

3 comments:

Malia said...

What a hoot indeed! Super cute, great job sista. :)

Unknown said...

Hilariously adorable. We love the post and linked to you. Hope you had a great weekend!

Jenn said...

Those are super cute :) I also love that book - are you going to make peas and carrots cupcakes next??